Wednesday 24th of April 2024
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a sub-prime war .....

a sub-prime war .....

The war in Iraq has become "a major debacle" and the outcome "is in doubt" despite improvements in security from the build-up in U.S. forces, according to a highly critical study published Thursday by the Pentagon's premier military educational institute. 

The report released by the National Defense University raises fresh doubts about President Bush's projections of a U.S. victory in Iraq just a week after Bush announced that he was suspending U.S. troop reductions. 

The report carries considerable weight because it was written by Joseph Collins, a former senior Pentagon official, and was based in part on interviews with other former senior defense and intelligence officials who played roles in pre-war preparations. 

It was published by the university's National Institute for Strategic Studies, a Defense Department research center. 

"Measured in blood and treasure, the war in Iraq has achieved the status of a major war and a major debacle," says the report's opening line. 

Pentagon Institute Calls Iraq War 'A Major Debacle' With Outcome 'In Doubt'

Enthralled by little wars?

Gus: Apparently some people do not agree with the journalistic assessment (mentioned above) of the report. I have been slightly annoyed by other assessment of the same institute paper and the paper itself, that is under the armed forces auspices of the NDU:

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The National Defense University (NDU) educates military and civilian
leaders through teaching, research, and outreach in national security
strategy, national military strategy, and national resource
strategy; joint and multinational operations; information strategies,
operations, and resource management; acquisition; and regional
defense and security studies.
Dr. JAMes A. sCheAr
Director of Research
NDU PRESS STAFF
Colonel DAvID h. Gurney, usMC (reT.)
Director

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Thus the report whose author is Joseph J Collins is looked at from a different pair of army binoculars by Collins himself and it is hard to know whether this is to accommodate his "side" to the warriors or if he truly believes in the rights to wage war for whatever purpose that is not defence. The following analysis comes from a site called "Small War Journal", possibly grown from a printed journal, designed to subtly and not so subtly promote war as a means to solve political problems in places. And knowing the hatred of anything communist in the USA, the mind boggles... The "Small War Journal" motto below sums it all up:

Small wars are operations undertaken under executive authority, wherein military force is combined with diplomatic pressure in the internal or external affairs of another state whose government is unstable, inadequate, or unsatisfactory for the preservation of life and of such interests as are determined by the foreign policy of our Nation.

--Small Wars Manual, 1940

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Gus: ugly "ideals" that accept the notion that war is necessary to solve problems as seen by the warriors. There lies a major flaw. Who is qualified to decide that a "government is unstable, inadequate, or unsatisfactory for the preservation of life and of such interests as are determined by the foreign policy of our Nation [the USA]...

Rubbish and hubris of the grandest kind!!!!!! ... And whose "executive authority?" The US president? The UN? The grand Doodah?

But here is what the Small War Journal, obviously read by US armed forces says of the assessment mentioned in the blog above:

The Miami Herald piece on a NDU "occasional paper" (Choosing War: The Decision to Invade Iraq and Its Aftermath), quoted alternately as a Pentagon or NDU study, raised some flags here at SWJ. So we asked the author, Joseph Collins, to provide some context. His reply:

The Miami Herald story ("Pentagon Study: War is a 'Debacle' ") distorts the nature of and intent of my personal research project. It was not an NDU study, nor was it a Pentagon study. Indeed, the implication of the Herald story was that this study was mostly about current events. Such is not the case. It was mainly about the period 2002-04. The story also hypes a number of paragraphs, many of which are quoted out of context. The study does not "lay much of the blame" on Secretary Rumsfeld for problems in the conduct of the war, nor does it say that he "bypassed the Joint Chiefs of Staff." It does not single out "Condoleeza Rice and Stephen Hadley" for criticism. Here is a fair summary of my personal [Collins's] research, which formally is NDU INSS Occasional Paper 5, "Choosing War: The Decision to Invade Iraq and Its Aftermath." This study examines how the United States chose to go to war in Iraq, how its decision-making process functioned, and what can be done to improve that process. The central finding of this study is that U.S. efforts in Iraq were hobbled by a set of faulty assumptions, a flawed planning effort, and a continuing inability to create security conditions in Iraq that could have fostered meaningful advances in stabilization, reconstruction, and governance. With the best of intentions, the United States toppled a vile, dangerous regime but has been unable to replace it with a stable entity. Even allowing for progress under the Surge, the study insists that mistakes in the Iraq operation cry out in the mid- to long-term for improvements in the U.S. decision-making and policy execution systems.

 

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Gus: etc... more stuff. More flap-dance steps... quite stunning really by the overt manipulation of admission of errors, etc, and still supporting a bad operation in order to turn it into a silk purse. No wonder a few of the bloggers on the article mentioned in the blog above are annoyed at Collins limiting the Iraqi casualties to around 86,000, when the official Iraqi government would acknowledge at least 130,000 and many unofficial studies, but more accurate (+ or - 4 per cent margin of error), would put that figure well above 500,000. The fact that nearly 4 million people have been "refugeed" is quite obscene.

My prediction was that the US would not be out of Iraq for a long while (I made a bet of 25 years before the war started and I'm already 20 per cent there...) because the original intent — against the mega-lie that the US would be in and out of there in 6 months, with a new Iraqi government functioning well — was always for the US to STAY in Iraq for a long time, if not "forever" (50 years or more).

 

 

I hate wars — Small or big, or little...